Headed Home...

I have been in Chicago and Louisville for the past week. Chicago has three dear friends that love me very much, and though I don't really care for the city, being with them has been immensely healing. Last night, when I got back to Chicago from Louisville, the couple I'm staying with told me that to them, I'm family. The statement came about because when I was here early last week, a package arrived for them while I was gone. Amber asked why I didn't open it, sincerely. "You're family!"

This is the only house that isn't my actual family where there's a picture of me on the fridge, far as I know. I'm sitting on the bed in their guest room right now, the sheets stripped and drying just outside the door. I should have left nearly three hours ago. I'm just going to hit awful traffic now. But my gut is all in knots and I keep tearing up. I'm afraid to go home. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't know what the next few months hold for me, and I'm afraid.

I've been away for a week and it is the happiest, most content I've been for months. Since before Chris and I broke up. I had a week of adult conversations, interactions, situations. I went out, to shows, to bars, to restaurants, and no one was obnoxious, no one acted a fool, no one said any stupid shit to me, and it was eye-opening. I've thought for a bit now that maybe I'm really done with the party life. Like most things I do actually mean eventually, I think I've been saying this for about three years now. I want reasonable, adult people in my life. We can still go to shows, go to bars, go out and drink, but getting shit faced doesn't feel like me anymore. Fucking dudes who have appropriately thick bodies and the right amount of chest hair but are assholes doesn't feel like what I should be doing anymore. You'd think that would have occurred to me some time ago, and it did, about half-way, nearly a year ago, but, fuck.

I think I'm done. I want to focus on me, on healing all the things I'm holding onto that make me difficult to be close to (with the understanding that I am always going to be an intense, difficult person. I know that's who I am, and I don't want to be someone else. I do want some smoother edges, though). My other friend here in Chicago told me I'm much calmer than last we met two years ago. That means a lot to me.

Every year for the past three years I've gone on a trip this time of year that's put huge things into perspective and moved me forward a great deal. Memphis in 2011 pushed me toward forming my band. New Orleans 2012 made me realize just how many toxic people I was keeping in my life. I hope looking back around this time next year, it'll feel like something just as big was created from my travels.

Emotionally exhausted

Today is a heavy heart day. Today, six years ago, a woman who was loved by everyone who ever met her overdosed on heroin. She wasn't found for four days. On top of heartbreak, missing Chris, the stress of not enough money and being at a crossroads with what to do for money in the future, my grandmother dying (she was moved to Sioux City for more tests, the likelihood is she'll never leave the hospital), and a host of other small issues, I'm kind of at my limit here, emotionally.

My friend Johnny is going to come over in a bit and we're going to take my dog for a walk, go see Searching for Sugar Man, and then have a drink. His treat. I need all of that. I'm sad and too in my head today.

I can't remember a time where I felt this emotionally spent and wasn't a wreck. I'm proud of myself, of the technical grace I am taking on these problems with, but there's so much comfort in just letting yourself fall apart. This is so much harder. Curiously, I am almost completely without anxiety.

I am leaving for Chicago on Monday to visit friends, and then I'll be traveling with one of those friends down to Louisville. I hope to have some jewelry made for a potential money-making venture, and I'll see if I can't get my stuff implemented in a couple of shops while I'm gone. I also want to see Louisville because it seems it might be a good place to live in the winter. Or hell, a friend is trying to get me to move to LA. He made a very valid point, that to be a successful artist or any stripe, there are only a few cities in the US that make this truly feasible. NYC, Austin, Nashville and LA. I'd never live in NYC, Austin is far too isolated from anything else that's not-Texas, and Nashville, while in my favorite state in the union, is not a city I have found any attachment to. I've never really been to LA (a layover in the Greyhound station on the way to San Diego doesn't really count) and maybe I would like it.

In any case, I am so excited to leave the city for a week. Right now I haven't got a dime to fund the trip, but fingers crossed, I'll have about $800 coming in this weekend. Otherwise, I'll see my parents on Sunday, and will ask to borrow some money, much as I'd rather not do that. Canceling the trip is not an option, for my emotional well-being. Every spring, I've taken a trip that's reset my brains, for the last three years. Memphis April 2011, New Orleans March 2012, now Louisville.

Uff.

Receipts: New Orleans Bus Trip, 2006

Series of receipts found in my copy of Lies My Teacher Told Me, from a Greyhound Bus Trip to and From New Orleans in 2006:

Greyhound Food Service
Louisville, KY
726 Muhammed Ali Blvd.
Louisville, KY 40203
502-5853909

Order 1043

Host: Donald 02/23/2006
Order 1043 9:49 AM

Grilled Cheese 1.49

Sub Total 1.49
Tax 0.09

DINE IN Total 1.58

Cash 2.00

Change 0.42

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


I remember that grilled cheese, and that man. He was a jovial, roly poly smiling black man, and that grilled cheese was heaven, made on thick white bread, a piece of cheap-assed american cheese on each slice, grilled separately and lovingly on the flat iron grill. That man, Donald, wanted to please me, and please me he did.

I remember I went for a little walk afterward, admiring the very old houses along the Boulevard, occupied by some very poor people. The midwest just isn't old enough for me, and the east coast is too stuffy. The south is where I belong; it's warm, the food is amazing, the architecture solid and beautiful, even when it's near to ruin.


Greyhound Food Service
Nashville, TN
200 8th Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37204
(615) 259-2740

Order 1196

Host: Fred 02/23/2006
Order 1196 2:43 PM

Chicken Dinner Special 4.99
1/4 Chicken Dark
Roll

Sub Total 4.99
Tax 0.46

DINE IN Total 5.45

Cash 20.00

Change 14.55

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


I remember this meal too. Not so much the man, though I do recall being asked if I wanted light or dark meat and being very excited that I got the choice. It was a right delicious meal.

Now I am craving fried chicken, and hard. So good with a bit of creamy coleslaw, a nice white dinner roll and cold butter, and maybe some corn (on the cob or off, ain't no matter). Mmm.


Greyhound Food Service
Tulsa, OK
317 Detroit Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74120
(918) 587-5434

Order 1025

Host: Gandhy 02/27/2006
Order 1025 12:33 PM

Turk/Chz Sandw 2.79

Sub Total 2.79
Tax 0.24

DINE IN Total 3.03

Cash 5.00

Change 1.97

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


It's only in the deep(er) south that Greyhound stations have cafeterias. Most places, and I've traveled through almost all of the upper states and most of the southeastern states, just have vending machines. I really appreciate these cafeterias, as the food is hot, it's simple comfort food, and it's better for you than what you'd have to settle for at the McDonald's or gas station you're invariably given twenty minutes to find something to eat at. Another of hundreds of reasons I love the south and love the Greyhound bus ride through there.

I do remember this sandwich, too. At this particular Greyhound station, the cafeteria was just a basic sandwich line, with pre-prepared fare that you could add lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayo and mustard to. I took all but the mayo and it was a satisfying little meal. What was to follow, however, was rather ugly.

I finished my sandwich after enjoying the sunny, cool Tulsa day sitting on the stoop of the bus station. It was late February, so this was a mid-60s kind of cool, not a mid-40s if we're lucky kind of cool up here in Minneapolis. It was just a really beautiful, enjoy a sandwich outside on the stoop sort of day.

I got on the bus. Chose a window seat, and snuggled into my usual hoodie up, blanket on my lap, happy as a clam lookin' out the window position. Generally, the busses aren't too full, and because I appear surly, I wind up having the two seats to myself. Today was different. Today, the bus was gettin' all full up. Today, a giant she-beast was about to sit next to me.

She had breath like Grendel's mom, which she draped over me repeatedly in a moist stench cloud as she asked, "Are you a boy or a girl?" and other such brilliant questions. Her children were also on the bus, one far to the front (the girl) and the other far to the back (the boy) as there was nowhere else for them to sit by the time they got on. So of course, being the gnarly she-beast that she was, was determined to yell at these children every three minutes (inbetween harassing me about my gender) about some completely useless thing, and, well, I suppose this is where I should mention the little girl's name, or what I approximate her name to be in Normal Human English, vs. She-Beast English.

Thick-thee. Thick-thi. I have no idea how one spells such a thing. Or what the fuck such a thing means. Or why the hell someone would name a child something so gross. I just know that this woman's breath, and that child's name are forever imprinted upon me.

Thankfully, it was about and hour and a half only with them, and then they were gone.


Greyhound Food Service
Kansas City, MO
1101 Troost
Kansas City, Mo 64106

Order 1160

Host: Cierra 02/27/2006
Order 1160 5:48 PM

Maru Chix Soup 1.39

Sub Total 1.39
Tax 0.13

DINE IN Total 1.52

Change 3.48

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


Greyhound Food Service
Kansas City, MO
1101 Troost
Kansas City, Mo 64106

Order 1209

Host: Cierra 02/27/2006
Order 1209 6:49 PM

Pie-Apple 1.99

Sub Total 1.99
Tax 0.19

DINE IN Total 2.18

Cash 3.00

Change 0.82

Thank you for your patronage
Hope to see you again soon

--Check Closed--


It's strange to me how I really remember all of these meals. That soup was a cup of soup that you added hot water to, as this cafeteria was more vending machine fare than anything and that seemed my healthiest (and cheapest option).

There was a girl at that stop who chatted with me a little about a man that seemed suspicious to her because he was a hispanic man with middle eastern features (I assumed she simply thought him to be middle eastern because of her reaction). The girl was young, seventeen, and black. In the south, that just has too many layers of wrong. She continued to chat with me, and soon I found out she'd thought we were the same age.

So what did she know, anyway.

I miss the bus.